Speaker phones are commonly used to provide a user with a hands free communication device, and/or to enable multiple users at an endpoint to participate in a call. A well known problem with the tabletop speakerphones commonly used in conference rooms is that, in addition to the talker's speech, non-speech noise in the conference room may be picked up by the speakerphone's microphone and transmitted to the other parties on the call. In many cases, the noises are associated with, or caused by, physical contact with the table or surface on which the speakerphone has been placed. Examples can include people tapping their fingers on the table, typing on a keyboard that is on the table, bumping into the table, and placing or moving objects on the table.
In order to address the problem of noise generated from activity in the environment of a speakerphone, various techniques have been developed. For example, specialized microphone arrays and sophisticated digital signal processing techniques can be applied. Some of the commonly used approaches attempt to distinguish between signal and noise by relying on sound localization assessments. In particular, they attempt to collect audio originating from a specific physical location associated with the source of the signal, while filtering out sounds coming from other locations. Other techniques attempt to distinguish between human voice and non-voice sounds. Accordingly, such techniques have been oriented towards airborne sounds.